A distribution center (e.g., a warehouse, a fulfillment center, a cross-dock facility, a bulk break center, an unstructured storage area, and/or a package handling center) may be a physical space in which inventory (e.g., products) are stored for downstream delivery to retailers or consumers. The distribution center may allow a single location to stock a number of products. Some organizations may operate retail and/or direct-to-consumer distribution in a single facility to share investments (e.g., in space, equipment, labor resources, and/or inventory as applicable).
The distribution center may have a series of rows having stacked shelving. Items may be stored on these shelves. A warehouse management system (e.g., WMS system) may be used to identify and track inventory in the distribution center. However, the warehouse management system may be cost prohibitive to smaller merchants and distributors. Therefore, smaller merchants and distributors may manually keep track of items stored in stacked shelving based on shelf number, row number, column number, and/or relative position. They may manually label shelves, rows, and/or columns, and may need manually maintain inventory location spreadsheets. This may be a time consuming and error prone process. For example, items may be mislabeled and incorrectly categorized because of human error.
As a result, workers in the distribution center seeking to find inventory to fulfill a particular request may spend added time in finding needed items. Workers may need to manually look at a map, discern the labels of each product, and/or search for products on shelves by reading individual labels. This may be time consuming and inefficient. When a new worker is employed, it may take time for them to develop a mental map of the distribution center. This may increase cost. Further, such manual processes may be error prone because they may depend on human labor. Relabeling and/or rerouting of the distribution center to accommodate customized solutions may be difficult to modify, inefficient, expensive, and/or cost prohibitive.